


Touch

by Leyenn



Series: The Firing Line [2]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ivanova dreams the thing she dreads most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for _Midnight On The Firing Line_.

She can feel _her_, a too recent memory, and it's terrifying.

It's been a month since she took over her first shift on this posting, and she's getting the hang of it nicely. The crew need shaping up somewhat, but she can cope. She quite enjoys it. It's not a good day unless she has someone to shout at a few times.

Until the day when that someone is a telepath.

Today was not a good day.

Tonight is even worse.

She's lying in bed, buried under the sheets, wrapped in layers of satin that worry seductively at her skin; she wants to give up on sleep completely, but then, then the memory that burns at her will stop being an exquisite nightmare and become the true, real betrayal she knows it is.

For three weeks she's managed to avoid it: three communiqués lost in her paperwork, buried in places she reminds herself not to look, from a simple note to convoluted apology and a flawlessly detailed work record attached to each. Every inch of this woman's life is scattered to the corners of her office, creeping under the surface.

Her name is Talia Winters.

Born in Vienna, twenty-two thirty-one, at six fourteen p.m. Earth Standard Time on the twelfth of August, to parents whose names don't appear.

Raised outside of New York City, United States, never married and childless.

Rated a mid-level P-5 with no TK ability, educated to degree standard by Psi Corps, an expert in business practice and fluent in four languages. She's worked with politicians, press, criminals and children.

Perfect for this place.

Worse than any nightmare in the world.

Worse because she's polite, and soft, and careful - everything she shouldn't be, wearing that badge and those gloves. Worse because she was hesitant and Susan could see it, feel it, the way she tiptoed on eggshells over a glass of water and _wanted_ so innocently.

And yes, worse because she's attractive. Slender, quiet, beautiful in that way that makes Susan beg herself to wonder what's under those gloves. The ultimately untouchable delusion that she can't make herself ignore.

It's not enough that there has to be a telepath, they have to be her _type_?

And the worst thing is that she knows almost certainly that it cuts both ways. She can still feel where those eyes rested on her, the warmth of that look and the shine of tears when she explained everything. The tone of that voice, too smooth for just polite and too eager for just casual concern, like warm sunlight talking... and coming so close that she knows the words are not the only thing making her skin tingle.

She knows because she can still remember.

She can still feel it, just a little.

That's why she can't know this woman, she can't fit into that life, she can't want this nightmare she wants. Ever.

And why she still can't make it go away.

  


*

  



End file.
